Living quietly in her seaside cortege, attended only by her Chinese houseman H`an Wu and her long haired tom cat Dinner Belle, named before his rather obvious male attributes were noted,  Miss Abigail Merrick is a lively but proper Victorian spinster who chooses not to live in the grand but troubled Merrick Manor at the top of the cliffs, supplementing her small income by writing popular fiction detective novels under a male pseudonym until the hidden nature of the house Captain Edwin Merrick built from his immoral and cruel slave trade monies begins to consume the present generation!